


The Music of Far Too Early in the Morning

by athousandwinds



Category: Doctor Who, Phantom of the Opera - Leroux
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-26
Updated: 2010-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-06 17:40:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athousandwinds/pseuds/athousandwinds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Nice acoustics you've got here," said the strange man, bouncing slightly and clearly trying to find something polite to say about the cavern.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Music of Far Too Early in the Morning

It is impossible to describe the feeling which comes over one when one is broken-hearted. All food becomes dry, all beauties dull and sound is muted, like an orchestra playing pianissimo. The effect is not limited to these three, but they are the most important – even to the deranged lunatic who so recently terrorised the Paris Opera.

Erik, much in the way of those who live in the eye of a storm, did not think of himself as mad. He was unhappy, naturally, and since Christine's departure, he had been angry at intermittent times. He had played chord after crashing chord, but nothing was quite right about any of them. A simple five-finger exercise seemed beyond his power – beyond _Erik's_ power, the half-man who had created _Don Juan Triumphant_! Erik threw back his head and screamed. The tortured sound echoed back to him until it seemed inhuman, subhuman, a primal cry of agony.

"Lovely acoustics you've got here."

Erik turned to face the voice. A man stood behind him, leaning carelessly on a blue box which _hadn't been there a moment before_.

"Right, now, let me see...man in a white thingummybob, ooh. You must be Erik. That mask could do with a wash, don't you think?"

"No," Erik said distantly.

"Really? I mean, genius is all very well, but a cat's lick and a promise never go amiss, you know."

"Why did I not hear you enter?"

"Now _that_ is a very good question," the man said with what must be mocking pleasantry. "I mean, the old girl's the love of my life, but she was never great shakes at the seen-and-not-heard trick."

"Are you with the daroga?"

"Daroga," the man said, looking suddenly hunted. Erik was familiar with the expression, though usually people appeared to be more terrified. "Do I know a daroga?"

"Who sent you here?"

The man straightened. "Right, that one I know. Madame la Vicomtesse – or she will be, anyway."

"You know her?" Erik lifted his head and was viciously glad when the man blinked at him.

"Well, yes."

"How?"

"Wonderful lady, I almost offered her a lift wherever she was going, but she seemed pretty comfortable where she was."

"_How_?" Erik leapt up, but the man danced out of the way before he could seize him by the throat.

"Now, now, there's no need for violence. And it's got nothing to do with you, I'm afraid."

"Who in the Devil's Hell do you think you are?"

"You _are_ good at asking questions." The man seemed genuinely delighted. "I do like that in humans."

"Tell me!"

"All right, all right. I'm the Doctor."

\---

Erik – this Opera Ghost, whatever he called himself, the Doctor wasn't one to judge – was staring at him. At least, the Doctor thought he was. It was the tiniest bit difficult to tell, what with the off-white – someone really _should_ take a bar of soap to that – mask covering the human's face.

Ooof. And while they were at it, they could take a bar of soap to the rest of him, as well. The Doctor had hobnobbed with Diogenes, who'd lived in a barrel under the Athenian sun, and had his holidays on Rassilon knew how many sulphurous planets, but this stench was quite something. It was probably a good thing that Martha was still asleep. Humans hadn't developed the ability to close their nostrils non-manually in the twenty-first century, had they?

"The thing is," he said, "she seemed a bit worried about you. Now, admittedly, I don't have much sympathy, but I promised I'd come and check on you."

Erik stared at him, seemingly nonplussed by the Doctor's attempts at chitchat. "But she left me."

"People do that. Particularly humans, apparently." He sucked his tongue thoughtfully. "I think it was the Krabzap Survey that concluded that humans are statistically more likely to leave their partners than, say, Raxacoricofallopatorians, but I always thought that one was flawed. The punishment for adultery there is getting lashed with whips soaked in acetic acid, do you know?" Of course Erik didn't, since this was nineteenth century France, but that was no reason not to inform him. The gigantic organ was making the Doctor feel slightly uncomfortable, because while he was as good at music as he was at everything else, he'd never quite got the hang of composing.

The Master had been a genius on the drums. Funny, that. Perhaps music and megalomania were connected. There'd been that dictator on Kardem III who –

Erik was still looking at him strangely. The Doctor began to preen, thought better of it and stopped talking.

"She was the only woman I've ever loved," Erik said, crumpling down onto his piano stool. The Doctor watched his shoulders hunch and resisted the urge to pat him on the back. If he lost an arm this time he wouldn't get it back until he regenerated. "Without her, I cannot live. There is no point to it all. Do you understand me?"

"Perfectly," the Doctor said only slightly mendaciously. "I feel like that all the time."

Erik lifted his head from his hands, eyes glittering. When he spoke, his voice rang with frankly rather creepy harmonics. "You mock Erik? You _dare_ mock the Phantom of the Paris Opera House?"

"Not at all," the Doctor assured him politely.

"Christine Daaé was the one woman who saw past my mask – " Unsurprising, the Doctor considered, when Erik never took it off – "and loved me for who I was. And then she deserted me!"

"Not really the way I heard it," the Doctor murmured.

"It's her precious boy," Erik said viciously. "Her darling Vicomte de Chagny, he poisoned her mind against me!"

He was getting a little bit hysterical by this point, and to give the Master his due, _he'd_ never thrown tantrums. The Doctor regretfully erased the theory of musical megalomania from his mind. It hadn't been very good, anyway.

"Look," he said, quite reasonably. "I really do think you should leave them alone. For one thing, it's so embarrassing when they slam the door in your face and secondly, you end up looking like a stalker and people don't like that. Some of them say they do – Rigoletto Maurania has an entire romantic ideal built around it, but they have asexual reproduction there – but humans honestly don't, as a rule. They worry about the children and things." The Doctor had always thought that strange – on Gallifrey, he distinctly remembered friends from university getting highly-paid government jobs. The Master had been an excellent civil servant: dedicated, powerful and not above a little under the table. He'd lasted about two days longer than the Doctor himself.

"I am not mad," Erik retorted fiercely, looking about as sane as any human who was determined to prove their lack of gibbering lunacy. The Doctor coughed.

"I'm sure you're not," he said. "But since I'm here, would you like a lift?"

He was beginning to have another idea.

\---

Time passed so weirdly on the TARDIS that your internal clock eventually gave up the ghost. Like the ultimate jetlag, Martha had decided, and now she was just grateful for dreamless sleep. Luckily, the TARDIS had provided her with what was clearly the best bed in the entire universe.

Refreshed, she wandered down to the console room. The Doctor was already there, sprawled over a randomly materialised seat and hugging the chair-back to his chest. There was a tea tray on the floor, with three cups and a pot set out neatly. No sugar, but that was the Doctor all over. Either he had none, or he had so much that he became impossible to deal with, like a toddler stuffed with chocolate. He had a guest who appeared to be human, which was a surprising but not unpleasant change.

"Morning," she said, irrespective of whether it was or not, and the Doctor handed her a cup of tea from the tray.

"Morning," he said with his usual cheer.

"Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?" she asked, waving her fingers at the man.

"Oh! Yes. Martha, this is Erik. He's the Phantom of the Opera Garnier. Erik, this is Doctor Martha Jones."

"Nearly," Martha corrected automatically. When she shook hands, his skin was so cold she almost jumped; cold and dry like frozen paper. She smiled widely, if somewhat nervously, at the Doctor's guest. "So, you're, um, the Phantom of the Opera."

"I am."

"Right! I've – got some of your music."

"My music?" Erik's eyes gleamed and his spine straightened; the first real animation Martha had seen in his body. "You know it?"

"Yep." Sort of, she didn't add. She'd never been fond of mad geniuses; they always seemed to be completely out of touch with reality. Too many toothy grins and manic handwaves – she glanced at the Doctor and hastily backtracked. "It's – good."

"Of course it's good," Erik said with the same smug dismissal as the Doctor had when he said things like, "Of course I'm right; it's only basic temporal physics." Martha nodded politely, finished her tea and sloped off to the kitchen to get some more.

The Doctor followed her in a few minutes later. "We're going to drop him off on Beethoven Septimus. You'd like it. It's got acid baths and corrosive mud treatments – best spa in the universe, if you're Callopian."

"Why?" Martha asked. She dumped half the sugar bowl in the Doctor's cup and he took it from her with a wide, affectionate smile that made her mouth twitch in response. "I mean – if he's the Phantom, he killed people. This isn't your usual style, even for geniuses. _Especially_ for geniuses." She wasn't sure that she liked the idea of a new trend, largely because she liked the TARDIS showers and didn't fancy the idea of Norman Bates paying her a visit.

"No, it's not." When he didn't appear to be any more forthcoming, she levelled another look at him.

"Doctor. Tell me what's going on, please."

"He's only ever had one person who loved him," the Doctor said, pressing his hands round his mug without drinking. "I don't want to imagine what that's like." Of course, he already was, just from saying it. Martha felt briefly guilty and then reached out to squeeze his shoulder.

"You're not the sort of person who'd have to find out," she told him with all the firmness that she could muster.

"Would you still love me if I had two heads?"

He was asking with a grin, the eyebrow twitch upwards which meant he was expecting her to tap her chin and call him Zaphod Beeblebrox (which meeting, incidentally, had been one of the highlights of her career as an interstellar jetsetter). Martha shoved him slightly with her palm; he pretended to stumble and tap-danced back onto his feet while still miraculously keeping his tea balanced.

"Yeah, all right," she said as she walked past him, hoping he'd be too busy playing Charlie Chaplin to notice her embarrassment. "Anyway, what else is on Beethoven Septimus?"

"I think he might be part Callopian, actually. They married humans – although it didn't always go very well, since human culture was having a big go on polygamy at the time and Callopians are like swans, they mate for life."

"Doctor."

"Well, like I said, it's a spa planet. And the music there is horrendous. I thought I might be able to wangle him a job as composer in one of the Philharmonics."

Martha eyed him suspiciously. "Do you often go to Beethoven Septimus?"

"As I say, lovely planet. Shame about the music. And the acid baths, but they only do those on request, so we'd be all right."

"Doctor."

"It was a _secondary_ motive. I swear."

Martha gave up. "Beethoven Septimus it is, then."

"Excellent."

"But you're testing whatever they give me first, understood?"

"Absolutely."

Erik was tracing patterns on the glowing column when they got back, his mask coloured with turquoise radiance. He seemed enraptured, his sunken eyes showing some faint light in the dimness of the console room. The Doctor cocked his head on one side, looking as thoughtful as Martha had ever seen him. He hopped down onto the mesh deck and began slapping buttons.

"Here we come! Martha, grab that lever."

Luckily, holding down the lever seemed to be all that was required of her, since the TARDIS immediately roared and jerked so violently that all she could do was hang on. The banging went on for what seemed like hours; Martha braced herself against the floor and prayed that the Doctor would get a grip. He did, finally, and when she crawled out from underneath the console he was stroking the column himself.

"I'll never understand what you have against this planet," he murmured. "She's never actually damaged you. Is it just like getting an itch in that awkward place? Or maybe a gaping wound, you know, I wish you'd tell me these things."

Erik was clutching the rail, his mask stretched over his face so tightly that Martha could only conclude his eyes and mouth was open with horror. She tried not to sympathise.

"Are you hurt?" she inquired as professionally as possible.

"No."

"Step outside!" In another lifetime, the Doctor could've been a circus ringmaster. "Roll up! Roll up!"

Beethoven Septimus was beautiful, even considering Martha's frame of reference (she'd begun keeping a travel diary). The sky was a pale, moss-green hue, with neon blue clouds wafting across the horizon. The red grass crunched under their feet as they walked towards a building like something out of a low-budget Disney World.

The other two stopped before she became aware of it, apparently looking at a lemon-yellow tree. She paused, listening to their conversation.

"...I don't often give second chances. Not any more."

"Then what is this? For the Phantom?"

"Because Christine Daaé asked. She knew I wasn't an angel and that you were even less like one, and she asked anyway." The Doctor's voice was quiet, as it always was when he was at his angriest. "Don't make me come for you again."

"You did this because Christine loved me?"

"I did this because I liked her. Don't waste this chance, Erik. There won't be a third."

He kissed Erik on the forehead, as if bestowing a benediction – or more cynically, giving him a DNA sample so that the Doctor could track him more easily. Martha began to walk back towards the TARDIS. A few minutes later, the Doctor caught her up.

"Gone off the idea of mud baths?"

"Yeah, a bit." She put her arm through his, but his eyes were somewhere far away. "Hey."

"What?"

"When I go back – when I finish my exams, I don't want you to go." Martha bumped him with her shoulder, as companionably as she could. It was tricky trying to tell someone you loved them without actually saying it. "I mean, I'll always have a couch, if you want it. I won't be going because I don't care any more."

The Doctor stared at her, and Martha wondered if he heard the warmth beneath her words, if he even realised anything about her. Then he hugged her.

"Oof!"

"Martha Jones, you're amazing. What do you lot call it? BFF?"

"I don't know who _you've_ been talking to. _I_ don't say anything of the sort."

"Oh, never mind. Pick a planet, any planet?"

"Gilgamesh?"

"When?"

"The year...54321."

He grabbed her hand and they started running towards the TARDIS. Martha made a mental note to change her shoes before they left again. Gilgamesh was wet.


End file.
